I Took A Pledge to Help End Racism. Step One: I Am Asking You to Listen.

Most people who know me know, that in the past couple years, I've become kind of a church slut.  I've been attending a number of denominations, and I'm finding it difficult to commit.  Please don't judge!  (Maybe I have unreasonable expectations, but that may be another blog).  I love the social justice focus of the Unitarian Universalists and United Church of Christ, I love my personal history with United Methodists and much of the theology, I love the ritual and pomp of the Catholic church, and I read a number of Buddhist writers (not a church, I know).  I am inspired by Jewish stories and wisdom.  I wish I could combine them all into one thing and throw a little Hinduism too.  Yet, one thing I did commit to when sitting in the Unitarian Universalist pews the other week was signing a Pledge to Help End Racism. 

Here's some background:  My city has been in a process of transformation, protest, conversation, rage, avoidance, and effort since Michael Brown's death in 2014.  St. Louis is talking about race and racism in more honest and open ways than I can remember in my life.  It has been a particularly passionate topic in my small community within the city/county and permeates everything from the school board to friendships to facebook.  I've tended to be in a more personal than public role, because that's where I feel comfortable.  Going to coffee with people, talking in kitchens with friends, attending community events, putting a Black Lives Matter sign in my yard.   And in the UU church I attend, racial equity issues are addressed from the pulpit almost every week - hence, the action item - sign a "Pledge to Help End Racism."  Like you, I wonder, how can I do that?  I am a working single mom with many worries, hassles, concerns, interests, and passions.  Do I have the energy or courage for such a thing?  Who the hell am I to think anything I might say is helpful in this literal landmine of emotion?

But I am going to take the opportunity to try to say some things and I hope that people who read this will grace me with the generosity of knowing that I am taking a risk.  This is a topic that angers many people and causes people on all sides to shut down.  I know I am not going to talk about this in all the right ways from a political correctness point of view.  And I am going to take a stance that some people dear to me will want to argue with me about.  I am asking that you pause before you make assumptions or respond.  I am a strong person, but I am gentle.   And in talking about this, I am talking from my heart, which is certainly as tender as yours. 

I believe racism exists and is one of the great wounds that prevents every system in our lives from being all that it can be.  Racism  hurts people in every facet of life - our schools, our hospitals, our neighborhoods, our businesses, our friendships, our churches, our families, our prisons, the arts.  This wounding leads to more wounding.  It goes on and on until many people of good will feel hopeless and afraid - what can me done?  This is too big or I am too angry and I am not willing anymore.

I am here to ask you to be willing.  I am here to ask you to be willing to listen.  

I'll digress for a second and hopefully bring it back around.

When the night isn't too busy with driving kids around to various sports and practices, I like to cook dinner and listen to podcasts.  The podcast I am most intrigued by right now is the podcast from San Quentin prison in California, which is a look at life 'on the inside'.  Ear Hustle  The most recent episode provoked many thoughts in me for many reasons - it was called Dirty Water - a conversation between Sara, who had been a victim of sex trafficking and killed her trafficker and LA, who was a trafficker himself, serving time in San Quentin.  It was a conversation about the wounding of sex trafficking and a practice of restorative 
justice. In case you aren't familiar, restorative justice is defined this way in Wikipedia:


Restorative justice is an approach to justice that personalizes the crime by having the victims and the offenders mediate a restitution agreement to the satisfaction of each, as well as involving the community. This contrasts to other approaches such as retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, or incapacitation.

Victims take an active role in the process. Meanwhile, offenders take meaningful responsibility for their actions, seizing the opportunity to right their wrongs and redeem themselves, in their own eyes and in the eyes of the community.

In addition, this theory looks at crime as something that happens against an individual or community rather than the state.  The dialogue between offender and victim is supposed to foster victim satisfaction and offender accountability.  

In this episode of Ear Hustle, I was intrigued by the act of both talking and listening as an act of justice-bringing.  Sara and LA listen to one another.  Toward the end, Sara asks LA a question and deeply listens to his answer.  She is not berating, but she is honest - she does not hear some key aspects of him holding himself accountable for his crimes.  But they don't leave angry - they say, 'maybe we can talk and listen more on down the road.'  There is justice and generosity in that.  

These problems, like racism, or violence against women are so big, we forget where we have the power to make a difference.  In so many ways racism is a crime against an individual or community.  I believe that the beginning of healing most injustices in our society at this time, not the least of which is racism, is through individual or small community response.  The very beginning of this  - and it's so do-able  - is to cultivate our ability to listen.

We are not very good at it anymore.  I wonder if we ever were, but now seems particularly bad.  And listening means not just listening to the words that are said, but understanding the feeling and true meaning behind the words that are said.  

I know that for the sad, unjust or hateful things that have happened in my life, it is a gift to be believed.  For me to be able to tell what happened and how it hurt me and for someone to listen and not tell me that I should think about it or feel it in a different way.  This is, in a way, one thing a therapist does.  Even more healing, might be for the person or persons who hurt me to listen to me tell my story and hold themselves accountable.  That would feel like the beginning of justice.  I think it would restore me in many ways.

Defensiveness is an enemy of listening and probably an enemy of peace and justice.  When I went into people's homes as a hospice social worker, often they were understandably defensive.  I was in their space.  I represented something awful and I asked nosy questions.  I think I became skilled at disarming people, in a way.  I didn't want them to be defensive.  I wanted to work together with them to find ways to alleviate suffering.  To disarm them, I listened to them.  And I believed them.  Even if they told me to go away (which sometimes they did.)

Maybe that experience is what dictates my approach and I know it is effective.  Listening and believing other people from a non-defensive position is healing.  Healing for the speaker and healing for the listener.  And in healing, there is dignity, and in restoring dignity and agency there is justice.

I would like to live in a world where we aren't afraid of one another and angry with one another.  I believe that there is enough love, power, and money to go around.  You getting doesn't mean me giving up.  As a white person, I am trying to be accountable for the ways I may personally have perpetuated racism, or just by being part of the system of history and community that I am, I am in a fabric of racism.  That is hard for me to say, I'm noticing - even as I write it.  And I write it not out of being under the sway of some 'liberal media' bias or white guilt or anything like that. I am writing is because, as hard as it is to say, I believe it to be true.  

So this is a little thing that I am doing.  It is not the only thing, but one pebble in the water.  

When I started writing this blog this morning, you know, I didn't realize tomorrow is the anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's death?  But he is someone I admire for many reasons and I have absolute awe for the poetry of his words.  So I will leave you with these, because  in all of us there is a seed of light, and one way we can grow that is by listening to one another and granting one another the dignity that we also want to be granted:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.